Breathe In
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: Prompt #49: Stoned. Shotgunning and a lazy evening sky. ZxC.


**Author**: Hades' Phoenix  
**Pairing**: Zack/Cloud, hinted Zack/Cloud/Aeris  
**Rating/Warnings**: R - some sexuality, drug-use, a little schmoopy. Unbeta'd.  
**Summary**: (Prompt #49: Stoned, from my 100_situations table.) Shotgunning and a lazy evening sky.  
**Word Count**: 1,400

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**Breathe In**

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Cloud is a mountain boy. This is an uncontested fact. He'd been born with his hands wrapped around a snow shovel and several woolen scarves around his neck.

Zack, on the other hand, had been born in a place only a few degrees cooler than the sun and maybe two levels less damp than an ocean. So Cloud could be forgiven for hating that asshole _so much _for being untouched by the oppressive air, or at least he had, but now the evening heat of the Midgar plains feels less like a first-degree burn and more like a heavy blanket draped over him. He's stripped down to his undershirt and bare feet, sprawled on his back and breathing in air that isn't heavy with metal and depression.

"Want another?" asks Zack, propped on his elbows, canting a sly look down at Cloud beside him.

"Okay," says Cloud, his tongue reluctantly obeying his brain and managing two syllables. He watches the flex of muscle in Zack's arm as he raises the other, the red glow at the end of the joint as Zack takes a long slow drag, the white smoke curling from the darkness between his lips. Cloud can't help stretching out along the ground with anticipation, needing to move, sliding his arms up over his head and listening to the crackling of dry grass as he twists restlessly.

Zack's eyes are dark as he leans over, pupils blown wide, but he pauses with his lips a breath away. Cloud's own lips are tingling, he can practically feel the touch of skin against skin, and when Zack's tongue flickers out Cloud groans and slots his mouth to Zack's. The taste of pungent smoke or herbs or _something _explodes across his tongue, the taste of slick heat as Zack murmurs, "Breathe, Cloud," and he does, draws the air from Zack's lungs into his. He can feel the warmth of the smoke against the back of his throat, no longer hot enough to burn, and his toes curl into the grass.

When Zack pulls away a couple inches and looks down, he snorts and start laughing, although if Cloud's honest it's more like a fit of giggling, and he gasps out, "Fuck, Cloud, you look so fucking stoned out of your spiky-ass head."

"Fuck you," Cloud hums back agreeably, distracted by the wisps of smoke he sees rising with his exhale between their faces. He isn't aware of his body arching up until the slope of his ribs is pressing against Zack's chest, practically a wall in SOLDIER charcoals, but the strangled sound that rumbles out of Zack is the funniest goddamn thing on the Planet. Cloud tilts his head back, laughing like it's going out of style, like he's going float up in coils of smoke and heat into the darkening sky.

He gets cut off by Zack's mouth and the laughter is swallowed up, sucked down like Cloud's got a whole other chemical to share. His body twists again. Wants to crawl inside Zack's skin and sew himself up inside so they're the same person, the same heart and lungs and smoke.

Earlier, the motorcycle that Zack had nicked from the ShinRa motor pool ("Lieutenant, if I hear anything about the corruption of a minor…" – "General Sephiroth, sir, I have no idea what you're talking about and oh, look at the time, gotta run…") had gleamed bright-hot in the sun, engine ticking over after Zack had turned it off and wrestled Cloud onto the ground. Now its engine is silent, distant roars of monsters quieted with the setting of the sun, and all Cloud can hear is the faint trill of crickets and the slow pounding of his pulse in his ears. Or maybe it's Zack's, he's shifting to slide a leg between Cloud's thighs and nudging them apart, body slowly pressing down into Cloud until Cloud is pinned flat against the ground with bits of straw poking up uncomfortably into the small of his back. His peripheral vision is blocked out by the tall green-yellowed stalks and all he can see is Zack, Zack and the purpling sky above them.

"S'all your fault," Cloud murmurs, not really sure what he's blaming Zack for but utterly certain there's always _something _that fits the bill, and the grin he gets in return makes him think of the waxing moon, bright and sharp and curved as a farmer's sickle in the cold-clear midnight over Nibelheim.

His muscles are too liquid for him to react with more than a twitch when Zack suddenly snaps out a pained curse and stubs out the joint in the dirt, _crap I just wasted some of it, Reno's gonna kill me_, but Cloud leans up and nips at Zack's pouting lips, licks along the part. He smells sweet smoke and sun-warmed grass and the mako-tinged, clean-sweat humanness of Zack's skin, chases the scent to the softness behind the man's ear. Zack groans and, bracing himself on one elbow, runs his free hand up Cloud's arms to pin his wrists above his head. He mutters, "You're gonna be the death of me, gods, wait until Aeris gets her hands on you."

The words roll themselves lazily through Cloud's head, nothing concrete except the impression of bright green eyes and an even brighter smile just as dangerous as Zack's but so much better at faking innocence. He huffs a breath, spreads his thighs a little more. "Still talking," he bitches, and digs his teeth into the strong muscle of Zack's throat.

Immediately he's being squished under the weight of a SOLDIER First and he grunts uncomfortably, scowls when Zack muffles a snickered apology into the curve above his shoulder and rocks his pelvis upwards in revenge. They groan at the same time because, hey, that felt kind of awesome, and why hadn't they been doing this the moment Zack had pushed him off the motorcycle with an undignified squawk hours ago? They've both still got their pants on and this is gonna be seriously uncomfortable when the purple haze wears off, but Cloud's got Zack all to himself in the middle of nowhere far away from ShinRa and SOLDIER, and who gives a shit about future details when he has everything he really wants _now_. Just him, and Zack, and the hard length of Zack against his own, under an open sky that might be hot as hell and nothing like Nibelheim, but maybe. Maybe that's the point.

"You're as bad as Sephiroth, just stop _thinking_," says Zack, sucking a bruise over Cloud's collarbone. He bites the skin and the sharp pain makes Cloud's breath stutter, runs his tongue over the redness and gets the wing of bone spit-shiny under the last of the sun's rays. Cloud can't decide if having his wrists held down is fucking frustrating or not enough, the need to touch warring with the sense of security that comes with having Zack, just Zack, holding him close and blocking out the rest of the world. It's not like he's a _girl_, thank you very much, whatever the assholes in his squad call him, he can take care of himself and has for years, but sometimes – sometimes letting someone else take control for a little while just lets him _breathe_.

So instead Cloud stretches out his body as much as he can pinned between earth and sky, tilts his head back and his hips forward and breathes in Zack's heat, solidness, _there_-ness, and it pools deep and thick in the pit of his belly. He widens his legs and cradles Zack's hips with his own, lets the last of the constant tension bleed out into the ground, and all of Zack's angles settle into his own. He can feel the vibration in Zack's chest as he groans soundlessly.

Cloud wriggles pointedly and nudges his chin against Zack's temple, and the man kisses him obligingly, slow and syrupy as molasses, slow as the setting sun, slow as the burning ember at the end of the joint. The arousal is almost an afterthought, body moving unconsciously and lazily because there's no hurry.

He breathes in.


End file.
